The present invention relates to a toy gun, and more specifically, to a toy gun's bullet feed mechanism that feeds BBs or other bullets to the toy gun.
A simplified bullet shooting mechanism for an air gun, which is called a barrel striker system, is already put to practical use (refer to U.S. Pat. No. 7,766,000 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,856,969). When a trigger is pulled during the use of the barrel striker system, a barrel first moves forward and then rapidly moves backward to strike a valve. This opens the valve to release gas, thereby allowing the gas to shoot a bullet.
When the barrel striker system is adopted particularly for a rifle air gun, which is a toy gun, the bullet feed mechanism needs to be carefully designed depending on the shape of the toy gun.
(1) For a handgun air gun, a magazine can be generally mounted either above the barrel or below the barrel. When the magazine is mounted below the barrel, the magazine is usually housed in a grip of the main body of the gun. One of the reasons is that the grip has an adequate space for housing the magazine, and that the magazine of a real gun is also housed in its grip. When the magazine is to be housed in the grip, a detachable cartridge magazine is often adopted. However, when a gun having a detachable magazine is used outdoors, there is a chance of losing the magazine. In addition, a relatively large number of parts are used for a gun having a detachable magazine. This increases not only the cost of manufacture but also the risk of failure.
As such being the case, a fixed magazine is sometimes disposed above and in parallel with the barrel for the purpose of reducing the number of parts and offering an inexpensive gun that is unlikely to become faulty.
(2) On the other hand, as for a rifle air gun, such as, for example, a toy gun that resembles an M24 sniper rifle or other real gun having an exposed barrel or a toy gun that resembles an M14 rifle or other real gun having a relatively small space between a barrel covering member and the barrel, there is extremely limited room for disposing the magazine above the barrel. As such being the case, the magazine is disposed below the barrel.
The rifle air gun has a longer barrel and is larger in size than the handgun air gun. Therefore, the space inside the gun, particularly the space below the barrel, is more than adequate except for a space in which a shooting mechanism is housed.
In view of the above circumstances, an inexpensive gun that steadily operates with the number of parts minimized to reduce not only the cost but also the risk of failure and permits the loading of many bullets to save the trouble of loading and provide increased convenience can be manufactured by disposing a bullet hopper below the main body of the toy gun (below the barrel) and disposing a fixed magazine below and in parallel with the barrel.
The following steps are performed to load bullets into the above-described toy gun:
a. Turn the toy gun upside down so that an opening in the hopper faces above.
b. Introduce the bullets into the opening in the hopper.
c. Hold the toy gun and shake it up and down several times until the bullets in the hopper drop into the magazine. After the bullets are loaded into the toy gun, restore the toy gun to its original orientation by turning it upside down again.
The next problem is how smoothly the bullets are fed into a chamber, which is a member disposed at the rearmost end of the barrel to retain the bullets. Although the magazine is positioned below the main body of the toy gun, the chamber is positioned above and behind the magazine. Hence, a spring-pressed magazine follower is disposed in the magazine and brought into contact with a bullet in the magazine to push the bullet upward toward the chamber. The bullet is then forwarded from the magazine, which is disposed in parallel with the barrel, toward the chamber through a tubular magazine joint that is bent and directed obliquely upward.
If the magazine follower is configured as a rod-shaped member, the magazine follower can move through the magazine, which is shaped like a straight tube, but cannot pass through the bent tubular magazine joint.
The bullet has to climb uphill toward the chamber against gravitational force although it is more or less spring-pressed. This may create a problem in which the bullet fails to reach the chamber, thereby causing a bullet feed failure.
Further, when the bullet is to be forwarded from a bullet feed storage and fed into the chamber through a bullet feed path, a route connecting the bullet feed storage to the chamber through the bullet feed path cannot always be formed in a linear manner from the viewpoint of the design of toy guns. In some cases, the route has to include an arc-like portion (curved portion). When, in particular, the distance between the chamber and the beginning of the arc-like portion is long, the shape of the follower needs to be carefully designed so that the magazine follower extrudes each remaining bullet.
In a toy gun described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-44460, a plurality of bullets B are introduced into a concave 48 with the toy gun G turned upside down and with the concave 48 facing upward in order to load the bullets B into a storage path 20 from a loading port 30 (see paragraph [0040]). Further, a joint 23 between a longitudinal portion 21 and an upright portion 22 is formed in a curved shape (see paragraph [0028]). As shown in FIG. 10, a follower 31 uses the pressing force of a push coil spring 32 to push the bullets B into a supply section 4 (see paragraph [0042]).